Researchers from the Institut Pasteur and Inserm, within the Microorganisms and host barriers group1, have just demonstrated in vitro and in vivo the effectiveness of a first specific curative and preventive treatment against infection by Chikungunya virus, which is why they purified antibodies directed against the virus from the plasma of patients cured of the disease and therefore immunized against this virus. By providing proof of the effectiveness of such a process, this work, published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, paves the way for the rapid development of a first specific treatment against the infection.
Scientists used the blood plasma of nearly 600 Reunion Island donor patients who developed the disease. During this epidemic, people who had contracted the disease, now recovered, produced antibodies that immunized them against the Chikungunya virus, these antibodies remain in the blood plasma for several years after infection.
Responding to a request from the Ministry of Health to the pharmaceutical industry to seek therapeutic and preventive solutions for the disease, the LFB undertook to collaborate with the Réunion branch of the French Blood Establishment in order to collect plasma from cured patients, to check for the presence of antibodies directed against chikungunya, and to purify them according to a process already used for the manufacture of an LFB drug available in France for several years.
